Words to Describe Edgar Allen Poe
by Lillian Bonar
Essay: Words to Describe Edgar Allen Poe
Pages: 11
Rating: 3 stars
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Words to Describe Edgar Allen Poe
"Hoaxter, liar, impostor, and plagiarizer" (45) are words Kaplan used to describe Edgar Allan Poe. Poe as he
claimed to be, was the best when it came to deception and perversion.
In living his life and even in his manner of negotiating death, Poe was a captive of the imp of perversity. But with
art as his shield, the realms of perversity became a haven for his troubled soul. . . Perversion is a complex strategy
of mind, with its unique principles for regulating the negotiations between desire and authority. To achieve its
aims, the perverse strategy employs mechanisms of mystification, concealment and illusion, devices characteristic
of the tales of Edgar Allen Poe. The perverse strategy is, as Poe might have put it, a faculty of human soul. (46)
Even though a good number of critics despise Edgar Allen Poe with a passion, almost all who read his creations
gave him credit for being a genius. He was the first to write a detective story and tales that dealt with split
personality or divided consciousness way before the matter was well known by the common people. He managed
to capture the imagination of the public by exploring the mysterious psychological world of the individual -madness, despair, pain, inner chaos, etc. His works, which lack a sense of right or wrong, had great influence upon
some types of popular fiction, with a detective story on the lead. Ranging from French symbolists, like Rimbrad
and Mallarme, to American writers, such as Bierce, Melville, and Faulkner, were influenced by Poe's writings. He
even inspired well-known Philosophers like Frederick Nietzsche and George Bernard Shaw. Just to mention a few,
gothic architecture, psychological abnormalities, hidden...